This was our 5th family cruise with Carnival, and our 3rd Caribbean cruise. We decided on this cruise because it stopped in Aruba - it was a toss up as to whether we wanted to just spend a week in Aruba or stop there on a cruise. As we had never been to Aruba, and the cost of spending a week there was compatible to the cost of the cruise, we choose to cruise. This was a family vacation with my husband, and two daughters aged 20 and 18. The ship was similar in size and layout to other Carnival ships we have sailed on, but the decor is garish (think very pink and tacky), and clashing on Splendor - not sure what they were thinking - haha!

We flew into Miami from Philadelphia the evening before the cruise and stayed at the Hampton Inn in Brickell. Very nice hotel within walking distance to several decent restaraunts - I would stay there again. We took a taxi to the ship the next day at 1pm, so didn't see much of Miami before we left (I've been there before several times)

My husband and I had a balcony cabin on the 8th deck starboard (I'd rather have port side), and our daughters had an interior cabin directly across from us. Both rooms were pretty standard Carnival cabins - no complaints. Our cabin guy was Astika - he was good and responsive to anything we needed. Carnivals change to a once a day room service was fine with us as I'm perfectly capable of keeping my own room neat. It is the one change that didn't bother us at all. We noticed that there is less staff overall on this cruise. Lido deck lines were long. I would have liked to get Mongolian Wok for lunch at least one day, but was not willing to wait in the very long and very slow line. The line for hamburgers & fries was also always long, and the 24 hour pizza line was probably only short in the middle of the night - they never had available pizza - so it was very slow. I only got pizza one day as I really dislike waiting in long slow lines. Read more